The spread of SARS-COV 2 has highlighted three major problem areas in the current global health security system:  the weakness of some health systems and their inability to implement urgent public health and clinical priorities; the fractured state of national, regional and global partnerships and associations that had previously been central to coordinating responses to past global health crises and, with it, the surprising impact of weak and/or incompetent political leadership on communicable disease control; and the consequences of allowing major structural inequities in the distribution of health and health care, to persist and to fester.